Looking up...

Passage for reflection: Mark 9: 2 - 9

Are there times we need to look up so we don’t miss something special? I’ve been remembering our wedding service. We will have been married four years on March 3. We got married in the bride’s church as is traditional - Peterborough Cathedral. Wow! 

I remember holding it together until Canon Jonathan invited us to move with him to the high altar for the blessing of our marriage. I looked up at the vastness of that part of the cathedral and little us standing there surrounded as we set out on a new journey by the love of God broader than the measure of man’s mind as the hymn writer puts it. We have a fabulous picture of this scene - it reminds me when I look at it that we are held no matter what, by a divine power and presence far beyond that which we can understand. 

Sometimes faith is about entering a mystery and gasping at it. 

Don’t we need to look up to see what the glory of God is really about? Don’t we need intentional times of reorientation to learn again who we worship? Think about a time you didn’t look up. You can miss something vital or you can come a cropper. 

I’m watching Line of Duty on the I player. It’s pretty gripping. But I have a habit of playing with my phone while watching TV so I can easily miss something crucial in the plot if I haven’t been looking up at the set. Thank God we can now wind programmes back! 

In our Grewelthorpe LEP church they have a problem that the vicar and the Methodist minister have the same Christian name. Meetings on zoom mean you have to concentrate hard. But it’s easy to drift off, look out the window, evict the cat from the study, be writing when suddenly the chair of the meeting says “what do you think Ian?” and both of us look up suddenly to see which one of us she wants! 

I remember going to London for meetings when I did a Connexional job. How dangerous were people who walked along crowded streets checking their phones rather than watching for the kerb or people coming towards them? 

The Gospel reading for this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent, is all about looking up. Jesus takes his closest disciples up a mountain, and there he is transfigured before them. 

They are overwhelmed by the experience. It is good to be there. Moses and Elijah appear then a cloud which overshadows them in which a voice says about Jesus being God’s beloved Son and it tells them to listen to him. Then they are there with just Jesus before coming back down the mountain. They don’t say anything to anyone about their day out but I can imagine it became, like our standing at the cathedral high altar, a memory to go back to again and again to give them strength. 

Two things strike me about this mountain top looking up experience.

One, the need for us to rediscover a bit of awe in our faith and in our worship. Those three men saw a glimpse of the glory of God in Jesus. This Jesus was to be worshipped. He wasn’t just a fine preacher and healer worth following. He was God. People ask me what I’m missing most because of this pandemic. It is being in the holy space, the place set apart for this looking up ritual I need. Yes zoom worship works and is meeting a need, but I need to physically go up the mountain, gaze on Jesus and be overwhelmed at his presence in my life. Maybe our worship has become too cosy. Maybe we need to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness again. And maybe we need to just expect the divine to envelope us when we enter that which is beyond us. Discuss! 

Then second, I think we need to remember where the lectionary puts this story. It comes just before Lent. 

Certainly, the location of this episode in the gospel narrative suggests we are to make some connection between what is unfolding on the mountain and what is about to happen in Jerusalem. Some church traditions hold that the Transfiguration occurred forty days before the Crucifixion. The glimpse of Christ’s glory makes it clear that something else is going on as that narrative unfolds, as Jesus becomes, apparently, yet another victim of the irresistible might of Empire. His glory, power, transfigured self will have the last word. 

Peter, James and John are given a revelation of who Jesus really is. We see quite clearly that Jesus is on a level with God himself. So, we, just before the contemplative and sometimes difficult season of Lent, are given a glimpse of who Jesus really is, resurrected, ascended, glorified. The disciples could not stay there but neither did they leave the mountain. They took it with them. It is what would carry them through the passion and crucifixion to the resurrection.

An Orthodox prayer puts it well:

Thou wast transfigured on the Mount, O Christ God,

Revealing Thy glory to Thy disciples as far as they could bear it. 

Let Thine everlasting Light shine upon us sinners, 

Through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Giver of Light, glory to Thee!

May we be ready to climb the mountain before we do Lent. May we worship in awe and in fear of what is above us. May we look up a bit more to cope with the world back down. And most of all, let’s expect a lot more. 

A journey up the mountain of transfiguration can bring us perspective. We have to get on with life in the world but we do so with an eye on things above to hold us and remind us. Knowing Jesus is God we can wow at and yet still empties himself of all but love, must leave us without words but held no matter what. Worry looks around, faith looks up...